


Beyond Good and Evil

by Draycevixen



Category: Luther (TV)
Genre: Christmas, F/M, Post-Season/Series 03, Yuletide 2015, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-09 00:15:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5518319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Draycevixen/pseuds/Draycevixen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The season had lured John back across Europe, back closer to home, but so far he'd made no move to actually leave for England. </p><p>This story is set post-season three and was written before season four aired.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [merryghoul](https://archiveofourown.org/users/merryghoul/gifts).



Paris was beautiful in the spring. Pity it was Christmas. She'd never cared for Christmas until she'd met John and seen it through his eyes. He'd be shocked if she told him his boyish optimism had such an effect on her, given the way he saw himself as irredeemably bad. No, her man had very little self-awareness but that was a large part of his charm. 

She turned her barstool away from watching the barman making their drinks to look at John, sitting across the room at a table by the cafe window. 

They'd been here for a month now. The season had lured John back across Europe, back closer to home, but so far he'd made no move to actually leave for England. She hoped it wouldn't come to that, hoped rationality would win out. 

She patted the small gift box in her coat pocket. She'd considered giving him a ring but decided in the end on a watch. She loved his hands and wanted them unadorned so she could admire them fully. Thinking of his hands on her had her shifting in her seat, the room suddenly warmer. No, she knew how she wanted to spend Christmas and had already booked the hotel. She didn't know how long they'd be staying and if they'd be leaving together or John even leaving at all. He could be so obstinate about things when he put his mind to it. 

Still, he never bored her. She'd been bored most of her life, a tragedy really, that and people's failure to understand just how dangerous a thing boredom could be. Well, for them at least. Everyone else in the crowded cafe faded into the background next to John, so vibrant, so alive and so challenging. She did love a challenge and life managed to pose so few of them for her. 

Their first stop had been Prague, John seemingly elated to leave London's dreariness behind. Prague hadn't struck her as much better but John hadn't been there before and she'd played tour guide, showing him the city she'd come to know the first time she'd left England, before she'd known she wasn't capable of leaving him behind. The first time, he'd haunted her through the cobbled streets and over glasses of absinthe. She'd felt compelled to bring him here, to show the old city's ghosts that she'd not be haunted by anyone but him. She just wouldn't stand for it. 

He'd beaten her to Berlin by a few days. He'd flown there and she'd decided to take the train. She'd invited an old acquaintance to join her onboard and then had seen him off at a convenient bridge. No one would be looking for him and she was certain if anyone did learn of his demise at her hands she'd be on their Christmas card list for life. She did love trains.

In Berlin, John had been withdrawn. She taken him to the galleries and one memorable night to the opera where he'd obviously been surprised by how much he'd enjoyed it. He'd even relaxed and held her hand in the booth for all the world to see. Well, if the world had been looking at them rather than at the stage. He really was surprisingly sweet. 

But then he'd ended up in hospital for two days. She could take the cop out of England but she couldn't change his nature. She understood at some level. She'd stopped a rape in Prague but the police would not have to concern themselves other than trying to identify the rapist's body she'd left behind the rubbish bins, if it was discovered in time and the rats hadn't taken care of it first. 

But Rome, Rome had been her favourite and why not? John had blossomed there. He'd finally got past his resentment about not being a cop anymore enough to take on a job with a security firm. Of course her John didn't need to earn a salary, she could more than provide for both of them but it wasn't in his nature to rest on his laurels so he'd found a respectable job he liked. They were a good company, providing protection to good people. 

She approved and set about starting a business of her own, idle hands being the devil's playground and all that rot. Unfortunately, John didn't approve quite so heartily of her choice. She'd heard some men had a problem with their partners having careers but when she'd confronted him he'd put his fist through the wall – he would never hit her despite being obviously furious with her – and ground out between his teeth that most women didn't run a stolen antiquities ring. She couldn't help it that she'd always been overly ambitious. He'd suggested they needed a breather and she'd agreed. There could never be enough passion in a relationship but she didn't want John to have a heart attack— at least not yet, not while he was still holding her interest. 

So here they were, together again, in the City of Lights and what could be more perfect? At least if she didn't know he had a Eurorail ticket burning its way through his pocket. It didn't matter. A few nights in a very good hotel, in her bed, would be enough to change his mind she was certain.


	2. Chapter 2

He'd spotted her the moment she'd walked in. Not that Alice would ever be easily overlooked but she drew the eye of everyone and left a vacuum in her wake, their survival instincts recognizing the presence of a higher predator in the room. 

Alice was all that and more. What it would be like to bed someone who both fascinated and terrified him? He'd always been drawn to independent women with minds of their own but she might be the literal death of him. There was no way she could remain as fascinated with him as she insisted she was and to bore Alice was the most dangerous thing you could do. 

But she had saved his life in Berlin without hesitation. He'd been helping out a friend, or at least someone he'd considered a friend, when it had all gone pear shaped. He'd been on the ground, getting the shit kicked out of him when she'd arrived wielding an expandable baton with a righteous anger. They hadn't stood a chance. He'd been on his way to hospital in less than fifteen minutes. 

He'd warmed to her afterward which with hindsight had been a terrible mistake. It explained his blunder in Rome when he'd stopped keeping a close eye on her. He could have lived with her trading in stolen antiquities but the disappearance of the previously most successful trader wasn't a coincidence or at least was one with Alice's fingerprints all over it. Not that she would have been stupid enough to leave fingerprints. He'd been furious when she'd cheerfully admitted to it. So he'd left Rome and told her she should leave him alone. It had been a month but he'd never stopped looking over his shoulder. 

The thing was, he'd missed her, god help him, he'd missed her. She was brilliant in all things. Alice might worry him to death but he never worried about her safety unlike the other women he'd been involved with. Not that they were involved. He smiled at his own idiocy, of course they were and she seemed to crave his company above all else.

Fuck it, it couldn't happen. He refused to have his head turned by flattery. He'd spent his life stopping people like Alice and now here he was, imagining they might have a future together. Stockholm syndrome was the only possible explanation. He checked his train ticket was still in his pocket before draining his glass and moving swiftly to the door. Outside, it was raining hard. He turned up his collar and doggedly walked out into the deserted street. 

He hadn't got very far before he heard the click of her boot heels on the pavement behind him. 

"Go back to the bar."

She slipped up beside him, sliding her arm through his and handing him a large black umbrella which he took to hold over both of them, like the gentleman his mother had tried to make him. 

"Don't be silly, John." She gazed up at him, with that alluring smile of hers in full force. "It's beautiful out here, almost like we have the whole of Paris to ourselves."

If they'd met under different circumstances, if he didn't know her so well—"What do you want, Alice?"

"Right now I'd like to go to my hotel before I get soaking wet. Will you walk me there? It's late and I'd rather not be out alone."

Like she wasn't the scariest thing on the streets of Paris. "All right, where?"

She pointed ahead and he walked with her across the city. She was right, it was beautiful and he was screwed. Their destinies were ever entwined but then his gran had said he was born under a bad star. 

It was no surprise when they stopped outside one of the most expensive hotels in Paris as Alice always insisted on the best. She would have walked right in, he felt the tug on his elbow, but he stopped dead. 

"You're not coming in with me, John?"

"No, Alice, I'm not coming with you." 

He handed her the umbrella and she took it but raised her arm to keep them both still covered by it. 

"Is this about Rome?"

"It's about everything." He stepped out from under the umbrella, immediately feeling the cold rain slide down the back of his collar. "I'm going back to London, tonight."

"We can do that, if we really must."

"I said _I'm_ going back. This—" he gestured between the two of them "—has to stop."

"If that's how you feel about it."

It wasn't really. He knew she'd leave a big hole in his hea— life, but it had to be. "It is."

"Then I should give you your Christmas present." 

She handed him the umbrella again as she reached for her coat pocket and he took it, moving in closer to keep both of them covered. He could see the doorman peering out of the hotel, trying to decide if they were coming in or just pausing near the door. Who in their right mind would stand outside in the street in this weather if they had a room in the hotel?

She pressed a small, exquisitely wrapped, box into his hand and took the umbrella from him, lifting it to ensure they both stayed dry. He stripped off the bow and paper and opened the box. Nestled inside was a Patek Philippe watch. 

"I can't take this. It's too nice for the likes of me." 

He tried to hand it back, but she tucked her free hand behind her back. 

"Don't be ridiculous, John. Anyway, it's inscribed, I couldn't possibly return it."

He flipped it over, angling it towards the hotel lights so he could read the inscription. 

**_That which is done out of love is always beyond good and evil._ – Nietzsche**

"You really believe this, don't you?"

"I do." She was looking at him in that same way again and he knew what Alice felt for him was as much like love as she was capable of feeling. 

And, despite himself, he loved her back. It wasn't the most suicidal impulse he'd ever had but it was close. A bad star indeed but she shone brightly as he kissed her for the first time.


End file.
